Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Too many dofollow links = penalty?
-
Hi. I currently have 150 backlinks, 90% of them are dofollow, while only 10% are nofollow. I recently hit position #10 for my main keyword, but now it is dropped to #16 and a lot of related keywords are gone.
So I have a few questions:
1. Was my website penalized for having an unnatural backlink profile (too many dofollow links), or maybe this drop in positions is just a temporary, natural thing?
2. Isn’t it too late for making the backlink profile look more natural by building more nofollow backlinks and making it 50%/50%?
Thank you!
-
1. Was my website penalized for having an unnatural backlink profile (too many do-follow links), or maybe this drop in positions is just a temporary, natural thing?
- Maybe you experience Google Flux which is normal.
2. Isn’t it too late for making the backlink profile look more natural by building more nofollow backlinks and making it 50%/50%?
- Try to analyze your competitor's backlink profile and analyze them,maybe they build more high-quality backlinks than you. Try also to inspect your ONPAGE score compared to them.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Do links from subdomains pass the authority and link juice of main domain ?
Hi, There is a subdomain with a root domain's DA 90. I can earn a backlink from that subdomain. This subdomain is fresh with no traffic yet. Do I get the ranking boost and authority from the subdomain? Example: I can earn a do-follow link from **https://what-is-crm.netlify.app/ **but not from https://netlify.app
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | teamtc0 -
Is this campaign of spammy links to non-existent pages damaging my site?
My site is built in Wordpress. Somebody has built spammy pharma links to hundreds of non-existent pages. I don't know whether this was inspired by malice or an attempt to inject spammy content. Many of the non-existent pages have the suffix .pptx. These now all return 403s. Example: https://www.101holidays.co.uk/tazalis-10mg.pptx A smaller number of spammy links point to regular non-existent URLs (not ending in .pptx). These are given 302s by Wordpress to my homepage. I've disavowed all domains linking to these URLs. I have not had a manual action or seen a dramatic fall in Google rankings or traffic. The campaign of spammy links appears to be historical and not ongoing. Questions: 1. Do you think these links could be damaging search performance? If so, what can be done? Disavowing each linking domain would be a huge task. 2. Is 403 the best response? Would 404 be better? 3. Any other thoughts or suggestions? Thank you for taking the time to read and consider this question. Mark
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarkHodson0 -
Dealing with links to your domain that the previous owner set up
Hey everyone, I rebranded my company at the end of last year from a name that was fairly unique but sounded like I cleaned headstones instead of building websites. I opted for a name that I liked, it reflected my heritage - however it also seems to be quite common. Anyway, I registered the domain name as it was available as the previous owner's company had been wound up. It's only been in the last week or two where I've managed to have a website on that domain and I've been tracking it's progress through Moz, Google & Bing Webmaster tools. Both the webmaster tools are reporting back that my site triggers 404 errors for some specific links. However, I don't have or have never used those links before. I think the previous owner might have created the links before he went bust. My question is in two parts. The first part is how do I find out what websites are linking to me with these broken URL's, and the second is will these 404'ing links affect my SEO? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mickburkesnr0 -
Are All Paid Links and Submissions Bad?
My company was recently approached by a website dedicated to delivering information and insights about our industry. They asked us if we wanted to pay for a "company profile" where they would summarize our company, add a followed link to our site, and promote a giveaway for us. This website is very authoritative and definitely provides helpful use to its audience. How can this website get away with paid submissions like this? Doesn't that go against everything Google preaches? If I were to pay for a profile with them, would I request for a "nofollow" link back to my site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jampaper1 -
Pages linked with Spam been 301 redirected to 404\. Is it ok
Pl suggest, some pages having some spam links pointed to those pages are been redirected to 404 error page (through 301 redirect) - as removing them manually was not possible due to part of core component of cms and many other coding issue, the only way as advised by developer was making 301 redirect to 404 page. Does by redirecting these pages to 404 page using 301 redirect, will nullify all negative or spam links pointing to them and eventually will remove the resulting spam impact on the site too. Many Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Modi0 -
Is it worth getting links from .blogspot.com and .wordpress.com?
Our niche ecommerce site has only one thing going for it: We have numerous opportunities on a weekly basis to get reviews from "mom bloggers". We need links - our domain authority is depressing. My concern is that these "mom bloggers" tend to have blogs that end with .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com. How do I screen for "reviewers" that are worth getting links from and how can I make the most of the community we have available to us?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Wilkerson1 -
Why would links that were deleted by me 3 months ago still show up in reports?
I inadvertently created a mini link farm some time back by linking all of my parked domains (2000 plus) to some of my live websites (I was green and didn't think linking between the same owner sites / domains was an issue). These websites were doing well until Penguin and although I did not get any 'bad link' advices from Google I figure I was hit by Penguin. So about 3 or 4 months ago I painstakingly deleted ALL links from all of those domains that I still own (only 500 or so - the others were allowed to lapse). None of those domains have any links linking out at all but old links from those domains are still showing up in WMT and in SEOmoz and every other link tracking report I have run. So why would these links still be reported? How long do old links stay in the internet archives? This may sound like a strange question but do links 'remain with a domain for a given period of time regardless'? Are links archived before being 'thrown out' of the web. I know Google keeps archives of data that has expired, been deleted, website closed etc, etc for about 3 years or so (?). In an effort to correct a situation I have spent countless hours manually deleting thousands of links but they won't go away. Looking for some insight here please. cheers, Mike
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shags380 -
Partners and Customers logo listing and links
We have just created a program where we list the customers that use our software and a link to their websites on a new "Customers" page. We expect to have upwards of 100 logos with links back to their sites. I want to be sure this isn't bordering on gray or black hat link building. I think it is okay since they are actual users of our software. But there is still that slight doubt. Along these same lines, would you recommend adding a nofollow or noindex tag? Thanks for your help.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PerriCline0